Radar Reef Wind Stats

The figure describes how commonly and how strongly the wind blows from different directions through a typical April. The largest spokes point in the directions the wind most commonly blows from and the shade of blue indicates the strength, with deep blue showing the strongest winds. It is based on 3360 NWW3 forecasts of wind since since 2007, at 3hr intervals, for the closest NWW3 model node to Radar Reef, located 5 km away (3 miles). There are not enough recording stations world wide to use actual wind data. Without question some coastal places have very localized wind effects that would not be predicted by NWW3. According to the model, the dominant wind at Radar Reef blows from the WSW. If the rose diagram shows a close to circular outline, it means there is no strong bias in wind direction at Radar Reef. On the other hand, dominant spokes illustrate favoured directions, and the more the darkest shade of blue, the stronger the wind. Spokes point in the direction the wind blows from. Over an average April, the model suggests that winds are light enough for the sea to be glassy (light blue) about 9% of the time (3 days each April) and blows offshore 31% of the time (9 days in an average April). During a typical April wind stronger than >40kph (25mph) was forecast for only a single days at Radar Reef

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